Doctor Who has long been my favorite show, but it’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually watched anything but the newest episodes. Before that, I was making a respectable run at getting through the original series, most of which I haven’t seen for decades. For various reasons, lately it has felt like it’s time to get back into it. 

Full Circle

Starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.
Companions:  Lalla Ward as Romana, Matthew Waterhouse as Adrian and John Leeson as the voice of K9

Written by Andrew Smith.  Directed by Peter Grimwade. Produced by John Nathan-Turner. Script Edited by Christopher H. Bidmead.

Format:  4 episodes, each about 25 minutes long
Originally Aired:  October – November 1981 (Episodes 9-12 of Season 18)

Writer Andrew Smith landed this gig writing for Doctor Who when he was only 17 years old, which is pretty impressive. It turned out to be a pretty significant story–it introduced new companion Adric, and sent the TARDIS into a series of stories set in “E-Space”, which lead to the eventual departure of both Romana and K9 from the show.

Spoilers Ahead!

It’s funny rewatching all these old Doctor Who serials, as I frequently find myself having to update my opinions. Full Circle is a story that I had seen, prior to this rewatch, more recently than a lot of others–meaning I’ve actually seen it sometime in the last 25 years. And from that, my biggest memory about it was the awkward way that Romana getting bitten by a spider was filmed and edited.

And to be fair, that is an awkward moment. Romana seems bizarrely unaware of the world that she lives in as she watches these huge spiders with huge fangs crawling along in alarming numbers, flippantly and repeatedly declaring that they are only spiders. But then the TARDIS disappears on her and she starts to freak out, picking up a melon that she intends to throw at one of the dozen spiders, only to have a spider hatch out of it and bite her on the face!

It sounds frightening, but thanks to the dodgy spider prop and the inability of the production of actually showing it jumping on her (we just cut to it already on her face), it’s not a great moment. And in many ways, it becomes somewhat representative of the weakest aspects of Full Circle.

Because for sure the weakest parts of the serial are in the staging of the action sequences. Especially whenever the Marshmen are attacking anybody, it looks pretty bad. The Marshmen seem to claw forward in slow motion and the citizens fall victim or escape in very unconvincing ways. Moments like Tylos’ heroic sacrifice or Dexeter’s death or when Nefred falls victim to the swarming creatures are just not staged very well, which undercuts what is going on.

I mention all this because besides this, Full Circle works really well. Like, it’s genuinely good.

Tom Baker gives a solid performance as the Doctor, bringing an appropriate gravity to the proceedings. He gets show genuine affection and concern for Romana, and also legitimately brings it when the Doctor faces off with the Deciders over their lies and hypocrisy. Lalla Ward holds up her side of the story, with Romana being appropriately downcast at the start over her impending return to Gallifrey. And she gets decent interplay with the Outlers and with Adric–it’s fun to see her give Tylos’ knife back after she’s taken it off of him.

And then speaking of Adric, he comes off surprisingly well in his debut story. I say “surprisingly” because Adric has long been one of my least favorite companions of the classic era. He’s can be inconsistently written and frequently comes across as a bit of a brat.

But here in Full Circle it’s too early for the character to be inconsistent, and any obnoxiousness can be chalked up to the ways he’s in conflict with his society. His relationship with Varsh is a legitimate highlight of the story and does a lot to deepen Adric’s characterization. The sequence where Varsh is killed is one of the best directed action scenes of the whole serial–a genuine exception to the problems mentioned a few paragraphs above.

Richard Willis does an excellent job as Varsh. He imbues the young man with lots of personality and is probably the story’s most interesting guest character. I wish the story had featured him and his relationship with Adric even more prominently, and I can imagine an alternate universe in which Varsh and Adric both survived and became the Doctor’s companions. I don’t know how that would have worked in the long run but it would have made for something different to see.

As it is, it was interesting to me to see Adric be bequeathed Varsh’s belt, and, eventually, to realize that this is what Adric is holding when he dies in Earthshock. I have never noticed that before. Without checking, I guess that Adric actually wears this as part of his outfit for the rest of his appearances.

Beyond all the characterization, Full Circle tells a decent story with some interesting ideas, and a few nice surprises. It’s a bit different that there are no actual villains in the story–even the Marshmen aren’t specifically evil as much as they seem to be responding to biological instincts. The sets and locations work well, and the Alzarians have got a pretty well developed society for Doctor Who (although it’s weird to think that Adric and his friends are actually evolutionarily descended from spiders).

Full Circle starts off a three story mini-arc about the traveler’s being trapped in outside “regular” time and space, to where things have “negative coordinates”. This is called “Exo-Space” or “E-Space”, and is accessed through a Charged Vacuum Emboitement” or a CVE–all concepts that are barely identified, let alone explained. But it’s clear enough that the TARDIS is trapped and that the situation is dire.

It’s also clear that getting back to regular space isn’t a purely good thing for Romana, since it means going back to Gallifrey and leaving behind the sort of life that she’s had with the Doctor. All of this sets up some potentially interesting story arcs that I’m keen to see play out over the next two serials.

What isn’t clear from Full Circle is what exactly has happened to Adric at the end of the story. If this was actually a self-contained movie, that would be kind of annoying, but since it was a weekly television series, then it’s excusable I think that we don’t learn for sure that Adric has stowed away on the TARDIS until the following episode.

Other Thoughts

• Adric, in common with all of his people, has an accelerated healing ability. I don’t recall that ever being mentioned about the character in any subsequent serials, but I haven’t rewatched all of them yet.

• K9 gets–temporarily–decapitated in this episode! I don’t know that that has ever happened to another Doctor Who companion before or since. But then I looked it up and was reminded of Nardole in The Husbands of River Song.